John Kerry proposes preparing a roadmap to save the Arctic

Speaking at the Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement, and Resilience (GLACIER) Conference Opening Plenary, the US Secretary of State proposed preparing a roadmap for nature conservation in the region, Rossiya Segodnya has reported.

"[We] very much look forward — all of you here — to participating today and building, we hope, a record, an agenda, a roadmap, if you will, for how we go out of here to lead into Paris, where we have a critical negotiation in December," John Kerry said.

He said this after hearing expert reports on the catastrophic climate changes in the Arctic. According to the reports, Arctic ice is now melting twice as fast and the average temperature has risen by four degrees over the past 20 years. The effects of climate change include the devastation of entire villages. Kerry said this has already happened to a village a few hours northwest of Anchorage called Galena, where 90 percent of buildings were completely destroyed.

"Everywhere I travel, leaders and average folk talk to me about the impact of climate change and what they feel and see is happening to their lives in one particular part of the world or another. [This] has this profound impact on habitat everywhere, on breeding grounds everywhere, on the ecosystem itself," John Kerry said.